A walkover as ramblers celebrate new rights

A "national celebration" of the new right of access over open country is planned for later this month, Alun Michael, the rural affairs minister, said yesterday.

On Saturday, Sept 18, Mr Michael will join ramblers in a walk over Kinder Scout in the Peak District, the scene of a mass trespass that led to violent confrontations between gamekeepers and ramblers in 1932.

Though Kinder Scout was eventually opened to walkers with the agreement of the Duke of Devonshire in the 1950s, the event has resonance in socialist history, reinforced by contemporary accounts that trespassers sang the Red Flag and Internationale.

On Sept 19, Mr Michael will join ramblers and representatives of countryside organisations in walking across some of the first new areas of land to be opened up in the Forest of Bowland - areas owned by the Duke of Westminster - and in the Goyt Valley, in the Peak District, on land owned by United Utilities.

Mr Michael said: "This will be a very special day for everyone who loves our countryside. For the first time people will be able to enjoy some of the most beautiful scenery that was once off-limits. It is historic because it introduces a major new right for which people have campaigned for over a century."

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However, despite strenous efforts by Ordnance Survey to produce maps for the first areas to be opened - in the south of England and the north-west of England - and the Countryside Agency to produce a website indicating where there will be restrictions, the agency admitted yesterday that its telephone hotline for inquiries would not be open at weekends.

Mark Hudson, the president of the Country Landowners' Association, said: "We urge people to remember that this is not a general right to roam. It is access to mapped areas of land which may be temporarily closed for safety and land management reasons."

Mr Michael said the freedom was "balanced" between the rights of landowners and walkers but he conceded: "If genuine problems arise, we will address them."